Firesheep â the Firefox extension that lets you nab people's cookies over insecure networks and hijack their web accounts â doesn't do anything that hasn't been done for years. But it makes for good theatre.

Chances are you don't leave your front door unlocked. And you shouldn't leave your Wi-Fi network unsecured either. Why? With a $50 wireless antenna and the right software a criminal hacker located outside your building as far as a mile away can capture passwords, e-mail messages, and any other data being transmitted over your network, and even decrypt data that is supposedly protected.

The results are disheartening, and suggest that not much has been learned in the decade or so that Wi-Fi has been popular. The cracker, CryptoCard Executive Vice President Jason Hart, found that just under half of the 40,000 networks he tried to access had either very rudimentary encryption or demanded no password at all.

In an attempt to help secure the world from hackers while using a public hotspot, Private WiFi has officially launched its WiFi Encryption Software. Until Sept., users can qualify for a month free of the hacker proof service.

Security experts at AirTight Networks have discovered a hole in the WPA2 Wi-Fi security protocol. The security hole was named as Hole 196 after the number of the relevant page in the IEEE 802.11 (2007) standard document.

All new Wi-Fi CERTIFIED products support WPA2 (AES-CCMP) security, but that's not enough to harden a WLAN against attack. Breaches can still be caused by policy, configuration, and coding mistakes, overly-friendly clients, or unauthorized APs. Continuous surveillance and periodic assessments are important to spot (and then patch!) these and other WLAN vulnerabilities.